| Azlan Othman |
THE Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), Haji Mohd Noor Jusmin bin Haji Abdul Samad, led Brunei Darussalam in the 8th Asean Senior Officials Meeting on Youth (SOMY VIII) on August 25, as well as the 7th Asean Plus Three Senior Officials Meeting on Youth (7th SOMY+3) on August 26 in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
It was learnt that the continuation of the national development agenda is important to involve youths as partners. The national youth development framework should focus on aspects of the potential of youths.
In youth development, the core matter is the continuation and sustainability of the programme and the process of formation of youths that benefit them.
The youths need to be prepared with high self-competence. For this purpose, it is important to build the youths’ capacity to think based on knowledge and current skills.
The youths need to be prepared mentally, physically and spiritually in order to ensure the ability to maintain the achievements and prosperity of the nation, and should constantly work to develop the country.
Because of this, SOMY VIII has certified a draft plan on youths for 2016-2020 approved by the Asean ministers responsible for youths.
Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), Haji Mohd Noor Jusmin bin Haji Abdul Samad, in a group photo with other senior officers from Asean.
Members of Brunei’s delegation led by Haji Mohd Noor Jusmin.
The Youth Plan 2016-2020 contains five goals – entrepreneurship, employability, people-to-people exchange, volunteerism and competency and resilience. Towards this, 16 priority areas and 45 activities have been designed exclusively for the rapid advancement of youth.
In a related matter, SOMY VIII will also create a Youth Development Index (YDI) that will lead to the well-being of youths. Measuring the progress of youths in this index is important when it comes to evaluating the effectiveness of programmes that have been implemented and improve on future programmes.
Benchmarks to measure the well-being of youths are important for policy formulation to produce superior youths who are able to face challenges in the future.
SOMY VIII is mobilising towards the implementation of the initiative. It highlighted the seriousness with which the YDI Technical Meeting was also attended by Brunei Darussalam on August 24 before SOMY VIII.
Haji Mohd Noor Jusmin was accompanied by two senior officers of the MCYS and the Department of Youth and Sports.
The 7th SOMY+3 is principally the Asean cooperation with the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and Japan in order to prepare the youths for future collaborative efforts that are indispensable in the context of Asean.
Many joint programmes have been used by youths in Asean, such as the Ship for Southeast Asian and Japanese Youth Programme (SSEAYP), also known as the Ship for Southeast Asian Youth
Programme and Japan, or in short the ‘Youth Ship’.
The relationships and networking of Asean +3 cooperation have brought prosperity and joy for youths in the region. Among its general aspirations is that no youth is left behind in the development projects.
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